“My thanks, we are in need of refreshment.”
Tapping down his increasing excitement in order to attend to Sally proved increasingly difficult for Donald. The large woman waddled slowly behind. The pain of her gout grew worse day by day.
As Donald followed the bald-headed fellow into Buckthorn, his gaze darted about, searching for the one he had come to see.
Thatcher led them to a sunny table in a room filled with roughly hewn long tables and crudely carved chairs and stools.
“May I fetch you ale, Your Grace?”
“Aye. And a tankard for Sally as well.”
He watched to see if there was any sign of recognition on the innkeeper’s face when he looked at Sally, but George Thatcher kept his eyes on Donald.
Two pewter tankards of ale were brought straightaway by an older, stern-faced lass who appeared to be near past her prime. Next came dark cheese and crusty bread, served by the innkeeper’s wife.
“Will there be anything else?” she asked. “My husband is carrying your cases to your rooms.”
“Your husband?”
“Aye. The girls are not strong enough.”
But what of the son? Had they come to the wrong place? Donald shot a questioning glance to Sally, who only hiked her white wisps of eyebrows and gave a listless shrug of her shoulders.
The duke turned back to Bess Thatcher. “Do you recall having met my traveling companion, Sally?”
Bess looked to Sally. The crevices in her brow deepened as she inclined her head and studied the large, huffing woman.
“It was some years back,” he added helpfully.
“I... I am not certain. There is a vague ... There is something familiar about her. I do not know.”
“Sally guided me here. Perhaps your husband will remember her. Fetch him.”
Sally clicked her tongue and confessed with resignation, “I have gained some pounds since I was here last. Over twenty years ago, it was.”
The spinster lass left standing by the table gasped, “I remember you.”
Before Donald could question her, she ran off crying for her father.
“Well, at least we are in the proper inn,” he said. “Hopefully.”
Donald dared not let himself think anything untoward had happened to his son. His only son. A boy he had never known but was now two and twenty years old.
The duke’s impatience would no longer allow him to sit still. He stood and immediately began to pace. With his hands behind his back, he silently counted his steps.
George Thatcher returned in quick, harried steps. He stared at Sally, whose smile seemed out of proportion, too small between her round, flushed cheeks. “Do I know you?”
“Sally brought an infant to you,” Donald told him. “A boy.”
Thatcher spun on Donald. “And you have come to take him from us?”
The duke stiffened. His heart seemed to have frozen mid-beat.
“If you have come to take him from us, you are too late,” the innkeeper grumbled.
“Too late?” Donald’s pulse raced like a madman’s. “What do you mean?”
“Cameron is gone.” The rosy-cheeked man scowled at Donald as if he were to blame for the loss. “He bought a commission in the queen’s army.”
“My son serves the queen?”
“Your son?” The innkeeper’s voice was barely audible.
Donald placed a hand on the man’s back. “My story is not easy to tell. My ... wife,” Donald refused to call Anne his mistress, “my wife, who died only months ago, bore me two children. And I never knew. Do not ask me how I came to be ignorant about the birth of my own children. I did not question my wife when I should have, and she purposefully hid them from me.”
George Thatcher’s narrowed frown reflected puzzlement, disbelief, and fear.
“Soon after they were born, my ... wife gave our children to other couples. I have a daughter and a son,” Donald explained. “I wish to claim them as my own.”
“You think Cameron belongs to you?”
“He is a young man now. I doubt he belongs to any man save himself.”
“Have you proof of what you say?”
Donald drew himself up and introduced himself once again. “I am Donald
Cameron,
Duke of Doneval. This is Sally Pickering, who at the behest of my ... wife, gave our son to you. My son.”
Tears streamed down the cheeks of the innkeeper’s wife.
“The conditions you were given for having the babe were that you call him Cameron and see that he wore a particular ring at all times.”
The color had drained from George Thatcher’s cheeks as he lowered his head.
Donald sank to the bench. “I do not wish to wound you, and I know it is a very strange story. Yet, you must understand my need to meet my son.”
To Donald’s relief, Sally pierced the suddenly silent room with her own explanation.
“My mistress feared for her children. She had relatives who might have killed them if their existence was known. She did not mean to wound or deprive the duke of his heirs.”
George raised his head. “Relatives who would kill them?”
“Mad men. Madness ran in the family,” Sally assured the couple. Her assertion was not far from the truth.
All of the Thatchers’ daughters had now gathered round the table. They stared at the duke and Sally in various states of belief and disbelief.
“Where is my son? Would you be so kind as to tell me where I may find my son?”
“Cameron is in Ireland. He serves in Dublin, but we have not heard from him in many weeks.”
“Which is not at all like him,” Bess added. “He has been sending messages regularly.”
“We fear he may be dead,” George said in a soft, hoarse tone.
The duke’s heart ceased to beat.
* * * *
Meggie could not sleep. Weary of tossing and turning, she rose and quietly slipped a clean, moss green Shinrone over her chemise. Taking up her musket and her brush, Meggie left the room. Neither the hounds nor Deirdre, asleep on the pallet by her bed, stirred.
She meant to watch the sunrise. Just as watching a sunset always soothed her, likewise did the sun welcoming a new day. If she had not been mistaken about Declan and Niall, she would have ignored the doubts about Colm planted by Deirdre. But Meggie had been certain Declan would never take up arms, as certain as she had been that Niall would not prove himself a coward before their enemies ... boys at that. She had been wrong in both cases. Obviously, she possessed poor judgment when it came to men. What if she was wrong about Colm?
She paused to look in on him, but all she could make out was his massive form on the bed. He filled the space, leaving little room for a woman to join him. When it came time, his marriage bed would have to be specially made to accommodate another, even if his bride be slender.
Ach! Marriage. Turning away, she made her way carefully down the spiral staircase in the dim light. The bard had shown no interest in Meggie. Perhaps because he was an English spy as Deirdre claimed.
Chills skipped down her spine.
Nay, he could not be. He simply cared for more voluptuous women. Meggie’s pert, small breasts would not attract such a man.
But with each passing day, the longing for a family of her own increased. The family that only marriage could give her. Ever since her mother and sister had died at sea, she had been alone. Her father suspected the English were responsible for the ship sinking, for the deaths of those closest to her heart.
Meggie strolled out into the bailey and toward the low stone wall surrounding the turf house. A dampness edged the morning air, and the rich emerald green meadows glistened with dew. Ribbons of pale golden light sliced the gray and purple sky.
First placing the musket and her silver-handled brush on top of the wall, she braced her arms and with a little jump swung herself onto the wall. There was no better spot for viewing nature’s splendid drama.
If it had not been for a childhood illness, the runny nose and painful cough that she frequently suffered from as a small lass, she would have been on the ship with her mother and sister.
She had cried for days after being left behind. It had not helped to know she would make the journey from Cork to Dublin later with her father. Soon after Meggie had finally dried her tears came word that the ship had been lost at sea. She cried again. Tears of loss and despair fell like rain of those dark days. But it was the last time she’d cried. Never since.
Gazing to the east, to the fiery tip of sun, she raised the brush to her hair and took long, languid strokes. Clearly, she must put her mind at rest by discovering the truth about the bard. And she must soon take a husband and end her yearning, her emptiness.
“So this is where you disappeared.”
Meggie started at the sound of the voice beside her. Deep in reverie, she had not heard Colm approach. “I came to watch the sunrise.”
“Alone? With English soldiers about?”
“I suspect they will not be early risers this morn.” She allowed herself a small, smug smile. “The boys need their sleep.”
His wondrous mouth turned down as his dark brows gathered in a scolding frown. “Ye cannot know that for certain. You are fortunate that I heard you leave.”
“Aye?”
“I came after you fearing you might put yourself in harm’s way.”
“I brought my musket.”
“As you are a sharp shot, I feel relieved.”
“You came after me to offer your protection?”
Colm cannot possibly be a spy. He is much too intelligent, too sensitive, to be English.
“If protecting you is possible for a mere mortal man.”
But then again, he might well be. The bard possesses the glib tongue of the English.
“Ye mock me at every turn,” she said.
“Only because I find it amusing to match wits with ye.”
Nay. Nay. Any man possessing the bard’s magnificent grin could be a spy. When he laughs the crevices at the corner of his eyes deepen, his eyes sparkle.
Her mouth went dry.
“Should I be flattered that I amuse ye?” she asked in a breathless rasp.
“Oh, aye. No woman has ever done so before.”
“Then, I am flattered.”
He
is
a spy. See how he charms me, blinding me to everything but the lulling deep timbre of his voice, the beguiling twist of his lips and heart-slowing caress of his eyes.
“You are a remarkable woman, Meggie Fitzgerald.”
“Truly?”
I am falling into his eyes, I shall be lost there!
“Never have I met another as brave and strong as ye.”
Would ye be the father of my children, spy or no?
What was she thinking?
Strong, did he say? Did he not see how she floundered in the wake of his words? Meggie needed to gather every ounce of her strength to resist Colm’s crooked smile, dancing eyes.
Lowering her head, she answered quietly, with utmost modesty. “I do what I must.”
“I seem to recall an occasion on which you beseeched me to brush your hair. Although I had never brushed a woman’s hair, I discovered that I enjoyed it. And not once since then have I had the pleasure.”
She held out the brush. “Take pleasure.”
The bard swung to the stone wall in one smooth, effortless motion. “Turn your head,” he instructed.
Meggie turned her head toward the sunrise. A breathtaking burst of muted fire surrounded by a golden halo broke across the horizon. Beneath the burden of her swelling senses, a shudder rippled through her body. She could barely savor it all at once. The splendid sunrise before her, the musky masculine essence of the man beside her.
Heaving a sigh of delicious resignation, Meggie surrendered to the inexplicable warmth that spread from her skipping heart to her tingling toes as Colm swept the brush through her hair, followed by the smoothing plane of the palm of his hand.
“Aye,” Meggie murmured, slipping into a state of near bewitchment before an Englishman’s shout in the distance brought her back to her senses. “Aye,” she repeated. “Ye are skilled with the brush, but how skilled are ye with composing poetry?”
“Before I lost the muse, I was the best in all of Ireland.”
Lost your muse? More likely the arrogant man never possessed the muse at all.
“I should like ye to create a poem for me, Colm.”
“I shall compose one this eve.”
“No. Now.” Meggie meant to put him to the test.
The brushing ceased in mid-stroke. The bard dropped the handful of curls he held.
“Now? But I am working without a muse,” he protested.
She turned to him with a sweet smile. “I understand. I simply ask that ye make an attempt. I would hear whatever ye create this eve. We – -”
But Meggie was interrupted. The Englishman’s distant shout of a moment ago became a noisy argument. Meggie joined the bard as he looked to the tower where the quarrel came from. She could see nothing. A sudden silence was followed by a blood-curdling cry that echoed in the still morning and brought a rash of goose bumps to her body.
Colm jumped from the wall. “Wait here. I shall attend the matter.”
Meggie could only feel grateful.
* * * *
Cameron strode across the bailey, thankful to at last feel only the slightest ache in his leg. When he stepped through the tower door, he immediately saw what had happened. The limp body of young Thomas lay at the bottom of the steep, spiral stone staircase.
Footsteps sounded in the spiraling staircase. Whoever Thomas had been quarreling with was coming down from the tower. He could wait to solve the mystery, but the boy was another matter. Squatting on his heels, Cameron listened for a heartbeat and felt for a pulse. Neither existed. Thomas was dead.
As he rose to his feet, Gerald Fitzgerald appeared on the bottom step.
“What happened?”
Gerald shook his head as he regarded the body. His wild white hair sprung from his head like wild wool on an old sheep’s back. The wart on his nose appeared to have increased in size.
“We were havin’ a discussion, we were. Aye, an’ the poor boy slipped an’ fell down the stairs. Is he dead?”
“Aye.”
“’Tis a well-known fact the English are a clumsy lot.”
“Clumsy?”
“Don’t tell me ye never heard.”
“I heard arguing,” Cameron said flatly.
“The lad was snooping where he didn’t belong. What was he doin’ up there in me tower? He had no right, and I told him so.”